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Car Maintenance = Free Airfare

This past weekend we went out to the ‘burbs for dinner with some of Her’s family. Shortly after pulling out of their driveway, we heard thwump thwump thwump thwump thwump coming from the back of the car. I got out of the car to see what was wrong and discovered that one of the tires was flat. We pulled into a K-Mart parking lot down the road to change the flat tire and found there was a philips head screw neatly lodged in the tire tread.

It was a little past due for us to do some maintenance anyway, so I brought the car in to get the tire replaced and have a bunch of other stuff done. The total cost of everything was a little over $300.

Instead of this being a major financial headache, we’re looking at it as sort of a mixed blessing. Last week, we received in the mail a special promotion for one of my rewards credit cards: spend $300 from now until the end of the year and they’ll give us a free plane ticket. Fortunately for us, that card has a zero balance on it. We were going to pay for the services with cash, but now we’ll just use the rewards card and then pay that off as soon as we get the bill.

We believe that credit cards can be used as a great tool to complement our financial plan. We’ve learned our lesson about overspending and credit card abuse. In this case it makes sense to use a card for the free plane ticket. Hopefully we can use it for Her to join me on one of my business trips sometime next year and we can have a cheap vacation.

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